"What's 'in love'?" Peachy asked.
Pete closed the book.
"Ah, that's a question," he said after an instant of meditation, "that
will admit of some answer. Say, you fellers, you'd better come into
this."
D.
Moonlight on Angel Island.
The sea lay like a carpet of silver stretched taut from the white line
of the waves to the black seam of the sky. The land lay like a crumpled
mass of silver velvet, heaped to tinselled brightness here, hollowed to
velvety shadow there. Over both arched the mammoth silver tent of the
sky. In the cleft in the rock on the southern reef sat Julia and Billy.
Under a tree at the north sat Peachy and Ralph. Scattered in shaded
places between sat the others. The night was quiet; but on the breeze
came murmurs sometimes in the man's voice, sometimes in the woman's.
Fragmentary they were, these murmurs, and inarticulate; but their
composite was ever the same.
E.
Sunrise on Angel Island.
In and out among the trees, wound a procession following the northern
trail. First came Lulu, white-clad, serious, pale, walking with Honey.
The others, crowned with flowers and carrying garlands, followed,
serious and silent, the women clinging with both hands to the men, who
supported their snail-like, tottering progress with one arm about their
waists. On the point of the northern reef, a cabin made of round
beach-stones fronted the ocean. It fronted the rising sun now and a
world, all ocean and sky, over which lay a rose dawnlight. Still silent,
the procession paused and grouped about the house. Frank Merrill stepped
forward and placed himself in front of Honey and Lulu.
"We are gathered here this morning," Frank said in his deep academic
voice, "to marry this man to this woman and this woman to this man. If
there is any reason why you should not enter into the married state,
pause before it is too late." His voice came to a full stop. He waited.
"If not, I pronounce you man and wife."
Silently still, the others placed their garlands and wreaths at the feet
of the wedded pair. Turning, they walked slowly back over the trail.
F.
Midnight on Angel Island.
Julia sat alone on the stone bench at the door of the Honeymoon House.
She gazed straight ahead out on a star-lighted sea, which joined a
star-lighted sky and stretched in pulsating star-gleams to the end of
space. She gazed straight out, but apparently she saw nothing. Her eyes
were abstracted and her brow furrowed. Her shoulders drooped.
A man came bounding up the path.